Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine • Hacker News Board

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#531

Post by nico » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

When I was a little kid I asked my dad, an engineer, to teach me computer programming.

He refused saying that when I grew up programmers would be unnecessary because “anyone would be able to program”, essentially the interfaces would be so easy/advanced that there wouldn’t be a need for programmers.

As a kid I never really understood his point. When I finally understood, I dismissed it as extreme.

Now I’m realizing my dad was right. Not sure when it’s going to happen, but it feels that very soon.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#532

Post by yoyohello13 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

asah wrote: post #465

First off, there's a lot of people shooting off their mouths - ignore anyone who hasn't used ChatGPT extensively: it takes some training to learn to use it. Several senior developer friends have been using ChatGPT quite a bit and it seems to work well in lots of places: - isolated algorithms and fiddly bits - it writes complex SQL statements in seconds, for example. LLMs should makes quick work of fussy config files.…

I’m sure my org isn’t unique, but we are constantly at max capacity and we have no money to hire new people. We have projects in the queue that will keep us occupied for years. I don’t think even a 50-90% speed up will lead to lay offs. We will just finally be able to get more shit done.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#533

Post by osigurdson » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

Simran-B wrote: post #396

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So exact in fact that they will need to specify a program in a click and drag interface, or in human language. This. I started programming in Machine Code, where the "editor" was a pad of graph paper. I've watched management- and business-focused people sneer at us geeks for my entire career, and watched them drool over the thought of finally getting rid of us. Hasn't happened yet. > I'd be surprised if the next st…

Wait until managers realize that their jobs are a lot easier to automate away with AI than the jobs of software developers.

The economy is so good at generating value that it is somehow possible for large portions of participants to create zero or negative value.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#534

Post by Jupe » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #250

anon7725 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since they hire software developers to make the specification more rigid, and the managers don't seem to be getting better at this over time, why would you believe this skill set is going to go away? Are we sure that an AI could not engage in enough back and forth conversation to firm up the spec? You’re kind of assuming that systems will be generated from a one-shot prompt, but it seems more likely that an interac…

> Are we sure that an AI could not engage in enough back and forth conversation to firm up the spec? This is the doomsday argument. What would I do if there's a nuclear apocalypse before lunch? I guess I'll die like everyone else. An AI sufficiently advanced to do that is also sufficiently advanced to run the entire business in the first place, and also argue cases in court, do my taxes, run for president and so on.…

Isn't the "Chat" part of ChatGPT already doing something close to this? I mean the clarification comes from the end-user, not from the AI, but with enough of this stuff to feed upon, perhaps AIs could "get there" at some point?

For example, this guy was able to do some amazing stuff with ChatGPT. He even managed to get a (mostly working) GPU-accelerated version of his little sample "race" problem.

See: https://youtu.be/pspsSn_nGzo

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#535

Post by ghaff » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

Keegs wrote: post #430

moneywoes wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides opening your own company does a role exist where you can do both?

There’s a role called sales engineer that typically exists in the sales organization but requires a technical background. From the engineering org’s perspective, your SEs are there to make sure sales doesn’t oversell or undersell. At my company your pay is commission-based but with a higher base than sales proper.

Solution Architect is another common title. As someone else mentioned, Developer Relations is at least adjacent though that tends to be less salesy and, depending on the role/company, may be more focused on community aspects than building demos and the like. In any case, at software companies, there are definitely customer-facing roles that are more technical though they may not involve a lot of direct coding. For non-field roles, product management qualifies as well.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#536

Post by aflag » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

gregjor wrote: post #378

aflag wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point, though. In the mid 80s there were a lot fewer companies producing software. Nowadays we have many more. Indeed SQL was not the only local maxima we could have gone for, but the point is that having an easy to use database with a powerful query language did not reduce the number of jobs, but instead increased it. Instead of a few companies hiring a lot of developers, we have a lot of companies…

I think plummeting prices for hardware since the 1980s drove that, not relational databases.

If hardware was cheaper, but writing software required an army of developers to do it, the costs would still be too great. If you read carefully, my point isn't that SQL was the cause of the tech boom, but rather that SQL and other technologies that make developers more productive didn't really take jobs away, because the market for tech would be smaller if you needed too many developers to do anything.

Imagine if every little web startup writing a custom CRUD for their business needs needed to write a new bespoke database. It simply would not be feasible or they'd need some crazy funding.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#537

Post by jtwebman » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #482

josephg wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that’s true?

Tell ChatGPT it's a product manager overseeing engineers and providing executive summaries. Create a system that feeds executive emails inquiring about project statuses into ChatGPT and emails the developers asking for updates. Developers reply with jargon-heavy details about tickets for next milestone, ChatGPT writes an executive summary that eliminates jargon and sends to executives. Not the full job, but it can pr…

This is a project managers job not a engineering managers job.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#538

Post by lakeshastina » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

Programming jobs will not disappear, but it will not be similar to what programmers of today do on a daily basis. So, I think the significant shift needs to happen in the way we are educating kids about CS fundamentals, Math and Science.

As AI systems become more able to generate much code by default, the expectations of the customers will similarly increase. Just remember how much an IDE like Eclipse or IntelliJ changed the productivity of programmers 20 years ago. Similarly, how easy apps were to build when Rails would create a scaffold with a simple command. It only allowed us to build more complex customer experiences in the end. This will continue.

Second, there is the need to verify the output from such systems, and also tie them together with other modules. In large enterprises, they would also need to be integrated into existing codebases, often legacy infrastructure.

Then comes the implementation of tons of Govt regulations in finance, lending, taxes, medicine, and so on as code. Software has not yet penetrated these verticals as well as they can. In a recent podcast, chamath palihapitiya mentioned that now it is possible for the Dodd-Frank regulations to be in code, versus as a written document. It's a good example.

Lastly, there are THOUSANDS of companies with legacy software systems that will still need to be maintained, and transitioned to modern technology stacks and infrastructures. This space will continue to be a major source of employment for programmers for the next few decades.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#539

Post by mrits » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

krab wrote: post #487

mrits wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you start out by disagreeing and then just give a summary of why you don't need an IDE.

I'm saying the trend (IMHO) is not away from a full blown IDE and that smaller editors with plugins and LSP can fill the the role as well, including the resource consumption. Vim can be very slow with a ton of plugins.

They not only can fill the role, they do fill it, and have been for longer and better than IDEs.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#540

Post by _fat_santa » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #521

mdorazio wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have two common misconceptions here. 1) Wages have very little to do with value/productivity in a free market. They are almost entirely determined by supply and demand. Value simply places a ceiling on compensation. Thus, if far more people can perform a "programming" job because of GPT-X, unless the demand for those jobs rises significantly the net result will be wage reduction. 2) There's this weird thi…

The developer can prompt for a solution with specific storage/performance requirements by specifying an algorithm, and specific scalability requirements using by specifying an architecture. Imagine a business analyst prompting for an app, and getting a ruby on rails monolith with O(N^2) performance for the core behavior for a service that is expected to have millions of requests daily.

> Imagine a business analyst prompting for an app, and getting a ruby on rails monolith with O(N^2) performance for the core behavior for a service that is expected to have millions of requests daily.

I see this as the main argument against "we will just have tools that allow managers and ba's to do what devs do now". I think folks often forget that there are two sets of requirements for every app: business requirements and technical requirements. Non technical folks might understand the business requirements very well and may even be able to write code that satisfies those requirements, but the real value in a dev is squaring those business requirements with technical ones. A BA might look at a DynamoDB table and say "yeah lets just run a scan for the items we need", whereas a dev will look at the same problem and say "yeah we can do that but it will cause issue A, issue B and sometimes issue C". And the dev knowing those gotchas is why you have them there in the first place, a dedicated person that knows all these gotchas and makes sure you organization avoids a footgun in prod.